The Best Grilled Cheese? Your Own.

There are grilled cheeses far and wide, for good reason. Many of them are good. Some, great. For April, Grilled Cheese Month, we'll be trying grilled cheeses from all over, and dispensing a little wisdom along the way.

As we near the end of Grilled Cheese Month, I am now keenly aware that, for many of you, grilled cheese represents nothing less than a warm, cheesy wormhole back to childhood, telegraphing Little League wins and pool parties and the kids who did or did not let you sit next to them at lunch. And that the best grilled cheese will always be the one mommy made, even despite the soggy Wonderbread and not-fully-melted Kraft singles within.

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But let's leave nostalgia out of it for a minute. Check all of that infantalistic baggage at the door and consider the following: that ordering grilled cheese at a restaurant, diner, deli, bakery, or hamburger stand will always be second-best.

This claim is not based on sentiment. Truth be told, I don't even remember the grilled cheeses of my childhood. But I do remember the grilled cheeses of my 20s. I was working as an editorial assistant, making a monthly salary only marginally higher than my rent for a two bedroom apartment that I shared with two roommates (do the math). When I wasn't swiping leftover food from conference rooms to bring home for dinner, I would make myself an omelet or a grilled cheese, as these were the two cheapest options that felt anything like a real meal. Late night snack? Grilled cheese. Hungover? Grilled cheese. Third date? I hope you like grilled cheese. When you eat a minimum of five grilled cheese sandwiches a week for two years, you learn a thing or two about melting cheese between two slices of bread.

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A small part of the reason why I favor homemade is about objective quality. One of the most critical components of grilled cheese excellence lies in reducing to an absolute minimum the time between when the sandwich leaves the pan and arrives at your face. The crispy exterior and warm, perfectly melty interior lie in ephemeral balance. In the two minutes it took me to stop and take a picture of this sandwich before eating it, the quality had already dropped a notch or two. When you order a grilled cheese at a restaurant, there's always going to be some lag between grilling and eating — maybe just five minutes, but what a five minutes. Let's not even get into room-service grilled cheese or take-out grilled cheese, both of which should be strenuously avoided.

But the argument in favor of DIY grilled cheese is essentially humanistic. The beauty of the thing is its accessibility to each and every one of us; our own fitness to make it without the intercessions of a chef or a mom or a food service. Grilled cheese has a material cost of about $1 per sandwich, can be made in under ten minutes, and from reasonably non-perishable ingredients that can and should always be waiting right there inside your fridge. It doesn't require trips to specialty stores, unusual equipment, or training. To make one's own grilled cheese is a small assertion of independence and self-sufficiency; to pay $10 for someone else to make one for you misses the point.

I've included my grilled cheese method below, merely as a jumping-off-point for your own explorations. The key ingredient is mayonnaise, which is to be applied to all surfaces of the bread. Mayo is really just oil that's been emulisifed into a solid. Upon contact with heat, the oil liquifies, coating each and every crevice of bread with fat. Meaning, you basically pan-fry it. The soybean oil used in Hellmann's mayonnaise has a much higher smoke point than butter, so you can get the sandwich exterior very hot without producing any off flavors.

Any kind of bread and cheese will work here. I prefer whole-grain bread (for the texture) and a mixture of American cheese (for the quality of the melt) and Cheddar cheese (for the flavor), but the whole idea is to use whatever you happen to have on hand. Don't pile the cheese on too thick, or it won't melt all the way through before the bread toasts.

Actually? Do whatever you want. It's your sandwich.

Simple Grilled Cheese

2 pieces of bread

Mayonnaise

No more than 2 ounces of cheese, sliced thin

Dijon mustard

Butter

Heat a large knob of butter over medium heat in a cast-iron skillet. Meanwhile, slather both sides of both pieces of bread with a generous (but not overly goopy) portion of mayonnaise. Apply a thin coating of mustard to one interior surface of the bread. Stack your cheese of choice evenly between the two pieces of bread. Once the butter has stopped foaming and is beginning to brown, add the sandwich to the pan; it should sizzle slightly on contact, or the pan isn't hot enough. Using a spatula, apply pressure to the top of the sandwich for about a minute, and then leave to cook for another 2-3 minutes. When the bottom surface of the grlled cheese is mahogany brown, flip the sandwich and repeat.